It’s only been about seven months since I first posted Efterklang, but they have a new album out and a fantastic, playful, M.C. Escher-esque video and, well, it’s all very exciting. Both “Cutting Ice to Snow” and “Mirador” (the video track) showcase Efterklang’s beautiful knack for creating soundtracks to films that haven’t been made — though I guess in the case of “Mirador” that’s only half true. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a sublime way to add a lilting soundtrack to your own never-ending film. Oh, and for those of you in Europe, Efterklang will be on tour all season, so go to their website and see if they’ll be near you…
Club 8
I feel a special numerical affinity for Club 8. The number eight holds a particular significance with me, a significance that I don’t believe I’ve shared outright with our readership, which is surprising, even to me, because I’m quite obnoxious with it in person. Put it this way, I probably would’ve been much better at math if we worked off a base eight system. OK, I’ll put it another way: I wouldn’t get very far hitchhiking. Here, you’d better just have a look (Taken, probably ten years ago, by Mr. Lifto backstage at a Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. No it hasn’t been Photoshopped.). Now that we’ve established I’m a member of Club 8, onto the music at hand (pun not intended, seriously)…
Club 8 is the Swedish boy-girl duo of Johan AngergÃ¥rd and Karolina Komstedt, homemaking music since 1995. Incessantly smooth and gorgeous, both the singing and playing, Club 8 has toyed with different takes on their cozy pop sound: ’60s folk, trip-hop, and bossa nova. It’s been five years since the last Club 8 album due to the fact that both Johan AngergÃ¥rd and Komstedt also play in Acid House Kings, not to mention AngergÃ¥rd’s work with The Legends. Their new album, The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming, promises to balance sunshine (“Heaven”) and melancholia (“Jesus, Walk With Me”—a quiet rebuttal to Sam Harris et al). In a word, stunning.
Clare & The Reasons
It’s fall. It may be 87 sacreligious September degrees in NYC right now, but as far as I am concerned it is fall. I want my braised meat, I want my long sleeve shirts, I want cups of tea and I want old school loungey twilight songs. Husband and wife duo Clare & the Reasons are perfecto for such seasonal urges. I think I once mentioned my secret compulsion to enjoy sappy soundtrack songs (it’s true, I’m sorry), and Clare & the Reasons (who named their album “The Movie”) are like all the joys of my secret musical vice without the any of the cringey guilt. Its plucky and sweet enough for my to get me my fix, but wacky and hip enough that I can play it for others and anticipate a jealous “wait, who is this playing??” Love that. Plus, the entire delicious album is on Emusic.
Ghastly City Sleep
Clocking in at a hair under 30 minutes Ghastly City Sleep’s debut can be considered, to tweak a literary term, an album-ella. An itty bitty album in number of tracks only (four), the self-titled work otherwise towers in sound and scope, but leaves one wanting more. The song featured here, “Hushing Weight,” lumbers open with slow bass blows underneath haunting vocals. Layers of tones, synth and piano, sneak in and then the song rises into a sweeping Pet Sounds-like chorus, but slowed way, way down. Sweet, reverberating harmonies frequently shine through the droning, post-rock fog of these Virginian sons. From the brief glimpse their debut offers, Ghastly City Sleep are working towards re-making the Beach Boys in Sigur Rós’s image. I should also mention that anyone who buys the CD is in for a treat. The artwork is a 12 panel poster of a painting by band member Brandon Evans, which is tucked behind a frosted transparency etched with the band’s name and logo.
Deer Tick
My first experience with Deer Tick was a prime example of the “please listen more than once phenomenon”. Upon first listen, I was impressed by the intro’s twangy vibe… and then singer John McCauley’s voice began to sing. My heart sunk. “Too raspy,” I thought. “Discordant!” I proclaimed. Then I gave it another shot. And another. By the fourth play, I was not only digging the delicious twanginess behind the singing, but I was swooning on McCauley’s gritty voice and stylistic odes to a day long gone. I got on board whole hog–music, lyrics and voice. I was passing the song to friends. I was soliciting Shan’s advice. (He said of “Art isn’t Real”–“its a great summer twilight tune” but then wanted to make sure “Art isn’t Real” wasn’t the band name. It’s not.) And so in this, the twilight of our summer, the ‘Hive gives you summer twilight tunes to ride out on the August wave to. Do me proud and listen no less than three times.
Bat for Lashes
The UK’s Mercury Music Prize is basically the musical equivalent of the literary Man Booker Prize: Though neither necessarily goes so far out on a limb that they’re what revolutions are made of, you can be pretty well assured that the nominees are making the best music (or fiction, as it were) right now as opposed to (though not always mutually exclusive of) the most popular. But you already know that. You probably also know that Bat for Lashes, the breathtaking brainchild of singer, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan, is a nominee for this year’s Mercury Prize, and she certainly deserves it. Fur and Gold is loose yet organized, expansive yet hummable, experimental yet familiar. Khan has a cinematic sense of arrangement and a sonic majesty that marks her as an absolute original on the pop landscape who nonetheless bears the best markings of recent forbears like PJ Harvey, Bjork, Chan Marshall, Sinead O’Connor, and Kate Bush. She weaves echoey piano harmonies with one-note-at-a-time basslines and harpsichord with marching drums, conjuring a cabaret-esque intimacy and drama. Yet unlike other recent entries into the post-punk chamber pop canon like Joanna Newsom and CocoRosie (great artists both of ’em, don’t get me wrong), Khan seems to make songs for more than just herself. Her “sounds like” description on MySpace includes “Halloween when you’re small” and “dark nighttime lovemaking,” which pretty much say it all. Fur and Gold is one of the most haunting and engrossing albums I’ve heard this year precisely because that’s the only way Khan could have made it.
Space Needle
For a brief moment in the ’90s (I’m talking like, three years), Jud Ehrbar, Jeff Gatland, Anders Parker were responsible for some of the most underrated music of that decade. Reservoir (Ehrbar’s ambient-ish side project) and Varnaline (Parker’s Americana/altcountry-ish side project) were impressive enough, but Space Needle’s two albums, Voyager and Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle set the standard for melancholic, noisy (and often very lengthy) art rock that modern acts like Animal Collective and Black Dice are still trying to catch up with. Why were they so overlooked? Some blame Zero Hour, the record label shared by all three bands at the time, and their distribution deal with folk-friendly Rounder which landed their records in patchouli-soaked bookstores instead of the appreciative hands of adventurous nutters like you and me. (The silver lining is that you can pick up the entire Zero Hour catalog at CD exchanges for the price of a BK value meal.) For those who’d rather have history packaged for them nice and neat like (and can afford a king-sized value meal), Eenie Meenie Records last year reissued select tracks from those two Space Needle albums on one CD called Recordings 1994-1997). Enjoy the trip…down memory lane.
The Winston Jazz Routine
The Winston Jazz Routine doesn’t come off as the kind of music you’d typically hear coming out of Nashville. Then again, I’ve spent a grand total of 20 minutes in Nashville and it was all in a car on the freeway—and yes, I’m a bit ashamed of that fact. Nathan Phillips is the man behind an ever-rotating cast of characters in The Winston Jazz Routine, yet despite who comes in and out, this is Phillips’ child, and that child ain’t no troubled-troubadour or honky tonk hoedown. It’s more like torch music for the youthfully somber. Phillips is at heart a piano crooner whose songs are more likely to stir in you the desire to embrace your regrets like a warm blanket than to tap your feet or snap your fingers. Yet these compositions are far from hopeless. On the contrary, they ease into your mind and plant the seed of melancholy we all need every now and then to wash ourselves clean. It’s tailor-made for rainy days, and Nashville has its share of those, right?
Savath & Savalas
The ever prolific musical shape-shifter that is Scott Herren (Prefuse 73, Piano Overlord, Delarosa and Asora) returns under his Savath & Savalas moniker. Herren sheds the digital complexity of Prefuse 73 for a more organic simplicity. That’s not all he’s shed. Unlike recent S & S releases, Herren has likewise proceeded without his collaborator Eva Puyuelo and is releasing this album on a new label: Anti. While Golden Pollen (out June 19th) appears to be focused on his own song-crafting he joins with José González and Mia Doi Todd for a couple tracks. “Ya Verdad” features Herren himself on vocals. He plays a variety of guitars from Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Cuba on the album as well as various Latin percussion instruments. This one should stop you in your tracks, slow down your day and cause a sorely needed moment of introspection and reflection. A keen dose of homeopathic Ritalin. It certainly mellowed my ADHD for the afternoon…
Bill Coleman
Really, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that Phil can talk about Bill Coleman much more effectively than I can, so let’s let him: “Essentially, Bill Coleman is a finger-picking-guitar-style singer-songwriter from Cork, Ireland. He released his debut album I’ll Tear My Own Walls Down in February, and has some free downloads on his website. I go to his live show every chance I get. The guy knows how to put on a show, especially when he has his full band (at times, reviewers try to compare his live shows to The Flaming Lips, for the sheer zanyness, and positive, uplifting vibes to come from the music and the persona of Bill himself. Some songs may dredge you through the darkest areas of the mind at times, but somehow, Bill always manages to find some light at the end. His quiet/sad songs are simply sublime and majestic. His upbeat songs leave you with a smile on your face, and the feeling everything will be alright.” See?